24 October 2011 - St Pauls in London Closed

Posted by: Alan

Anti-global finance protesters have forced the closure of St Paul’s Cathedral in London for the first time since World War 2, denying thousands of tourists access to the site.

Cathedral officials closed the landmark to visitors on Friday, a week after the protesters, calling themselves ‘Occupy the London Stock Exchange’ began setting up tents in an area at the front of the building in a copy of New York’s ‘Occupy Wall Street’ action.

Officials said they acted for safety reasons, after appeals to the protesters failed.

Some 200 tents have now been erected around the building, which attracts thousands of worshippers and tourists each day.

18 October 2011 - Work To Start On New Sydney Cruise Terminal

Sydney port authorities are going to start work this month on a cruise terminal at White Bay, despite industry and local government opposition to the project, the Sydney Morning Herald reports today.

At the same time, Leichhardt Council, where the site is located, says it will fight the move, claiming the project will lead to traffic pollution and restrict public access to the harbour foreshore, the paper says.

News of the go-ahead by Sydney Ports also comes as the tourism industry awaits the findings of an independent review relating to Sydney cruise ship needs.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith announced several months ago that Dr Allan Hawke had been appointed to assess whether cruise ships can be given access to Navy-controlled Garden Island.

Garden Island is seen by cruise operators as the only viable berthing site (other than Circular Quay) for large liners east of the Harbour Bridge.

The biggest ships cannot access berths west of the bridge, which is where White Bay is located.

14 October 2011 - Sydney Voted Number 1 by US Travellers

Sydney has beaten Paris and New York to be voted the world’s number one city by readers of a luxury travel magazine.

The Conde Nast Traveler Readers Choice Awards, held in New York, voted the harbour city their favourite spot.

More than eight million votes were cast in the awards with readers rating cities according to ambience, friendliness, lodging, restaurants, culture, sight-seeing and shopping.

NSW tourism minister George Souris said it was the second major international award for Sydney, which was named the world’s best festival and major events city by the International Festival and Events Association last week.

"Winning this latest award demonstrates Sydney’s position as a world leading destination and the gateway to Australia," Mr Souris said in a statement.

"It’s a vote of confidence not by travel writers or agents, but by ordinary travellers.

"By definition, this makes us Australia’s leading tourism and events city and will help the government in its quest to restore NSW to its position as the nations premier state."

The readers of Conde Nast Traveler gave Sydney a score of 85.1, ahead of the next highest scoring city, Florence at 85.

13 October 2011 - Ryanair May Remove Toilets From Their Aircraft

Posted by: Alan

Ryanair, the budget carrier which talked of having standing-room-only ‘seating’ in its planes and using flight attendants to help fly them, has come up with another offbeat proposal. It’s reportedly looking at removing two of the three toilets on its Boeing 737s to make room for more seats.

The airline, often criticised for its plethora of add-on fees, has previously threatened to charge passengers to use toilets.

It has also made headlines with suggestions that flight crew could be cut to just one pilot and flight attendants trained to help land planes in an emergency, and a proposal for a form of stand-up seat which would allow more passengers to be packed on to its aircraft.

11 October 2011 - Free Trips to Japan

Posted by: Alan

Japan is going to provide 10,000 foreigners with free flights to the country to try to boost tourism in the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March, and the nuclear crisis which followed.

10 October 2011 - The Leaning Tower of Big Ben

Posted by: Alan

London’s famous Big Ben clock tower is tilting, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph.

The paper quotes civil engineers as saying that the tower, part of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster, is leaning towards the northwest at an angle of 0.26 degrees, meaning the top is 43.5cms from vertical.

Monitoring instruments show that the tilt has been increasing by about one centimetre a year since 2003.

But it will take 4000 years or so for it to match the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

John Burland, a senior research investigator from Imperial College London who has worked on Big Ben and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, told the Telegraph: "The tilt is now just about visible.

"You can see it if you stand on Parliament Square and look east, towards the river".

He says he has heard tourists who visit the area to take photographs saying that they don’t think the tower is quite vertical "and they are quite right".

07 October 2011 - Conjoined Sheep Star in Video

Posted by: Alan

How appropriate - Air New Zealand is showing its true Kiwi colours, with its latest YouTube campaign featuring two conjoined sheep.

Named Mason and Jason, the odd pair are depicted in a series of new videos enjoying the new SkyCouch - which is ideal for the inseparable animals because the "cuddle class" gives them plenty of room to relax.

04 October 2011 - Self Service Cars in Paris

Parisian leaders wheeled out the first of the city’s blue, bubble-shaped cars at the weekend in what aims to be one of the largest self-service electric car schemes.

Anyone with a driving licence can pick up one of the four-seater electric ‘Bluecars’ for short journeys around the city, dropping it off at any battery point, The Guardian newspaper reports.

The Autolib service follows the French capital’s success with Velib, a self-service bike scheme.

The $260m car scheme is the brainchild of the city’s Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, to deal with traffic, pollution and the nightmare of parking - even though more than half of Parisians do not own a car.

It has launched with 66 cars and 33 rental stations across Paris, with planned expansion to 3000 cars cars and more than 1000 stations by the end of 2012.

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